Can I get harmed by an inlink?

[adriandg]

whoa, your title is so long it broke the layout. lol.

[Svetoslav]

Hi Derek,

I deal with a site which has a lot of low quality links. The owner decided it is a good idea at some point and got a bunch of links despite their quality. What I notice is that this works while the site is still small. Correct me if I'm wrong on this one. Not all sites are treated the same way and it definitely depends on the local Google version we are using. You will be surprised what still works on Google.bg. Things that would never get a site off the ground on google.com or google.co.uk.

Regards,

Svet

[dittoeffect]

Question number 1: No

There is a good rule of thumb:

If a competitor can do it to you then it is not harmful to you.

Here is why: There are many sketchy places you could get links to a competitor which would then give you control over their reputation without their say.

Question number 2: Also no but sometimes yes! (read below)

This one is a little different. Getting a link from a questionable source is not bad for you as described above, however if you reciprocally link back to that source then you may be vulnerable to being penalized by google if the site linking to you has been penalized. It is your responsibility to make sure you do not vote to bad neighbourhoods.

To further answer question 2, if you are reciprocally linking to a bad neighborhood and also linking out to another site your outgoing link can only be harmful if that site reciprocally links back to you.

So as long as your follow the answer above for question 1 then there will be no trouble

Hope this helps.

[AnthonyYoung]

This is simply wrong. Never take what Google says at face value. Please read the following article from SEJ and then the comments from heavyweight SEOs who've been in the business for a while:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/lets-kill-the-“bad-inbound-links-can-get-your-site-penalized”-myth/32426/

Unless your site has incredibly strong authority and trust metrics with hundreds of thousands or even millions of inbound links (like CNN, or WSJ) then it is absolutely possible for it to be harmed by a malicious link campaign with adult oriented anchor text (for example). This has been tested and proven.

[dittoeffect]

so you are saying you could just beat all your competitors with a malicious link campaign?!

what is stopping anyone from just sabotaging any site then?

the good answer chosen for this is the same as mine and thumbed up a few times:

"

Short answer is no.  It would be all to easy for black hat SEO's to knock down the competition by setting up links like these to competators.  Google wouldn't allow such activity as it would make their SERPs all to easily gamed.

I wouldn't worry about it.  Just keep link building high quality links from trusted sites and you should be totally fine."

I would be interested to learn more about this as the info in those posts is kind of limited.

JC Penny happened to lose out on a lot of its traffic because it lost links that used to be valuable after having been found out that the links they had acquired broke the rules.

Google is far to easy to game if a malicious campaign really could hurt current results though it would make sense to me if malicious links seemed to provide a boost which was then lost after the links are determined to be malicious.

I don't think my comment deserves a thumbs down when the good answer chosen is the same, I thumbed yours up for adding valuable points to my comment though

[AnthonyYoung]

If you read the entire thread (from the aforementioned article) and know which voices to trust then you'll have a better sense of what is good info and what is bad info. Jason Lancaster, the writer of that story, made bad assumptions w/o any support. I dare say he's a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Unfortunately, there are too many misinformed 'experts' that either want the attention or lack the experience or both. The 'good answer' above was chosen well before an actual discussion thread had time to materialize.

If you read previous comments in this thread you will see that my answer is nuanced and qualified in meaningful ways. My response also has a staff endorsement (I mean, if we're putting our endorsement phalluses on the table Also, just reading something doesn't make it true. You have to test. Then test again. This is only way to gain meaningful and actionable knowledge.

Be well my friend.

[dittoeffect]

Indeed, I did not look at the order of the thread. I have a friend who would love the way you talk haha. He loves to bring up the Dunning Kruger effect too.

I have read both threads as well as was familiar with the JC Penny incident since it occurred and looked into why after it did. JC Penny was the ones who got themselves penalized in this case.

Since so far all that has been presented in this thread has not been supported with a case study I would be happy to hear from those who have tested including yourself. Would you mind sharing your personal tests or at least posts that directly speak of tests?

[dittoeffect]

Indeed, I did not look at the order of the thread. I have a friend who would love the way you talk haha. He loves to bring up the Dunning Kruger effect too.

I have read both threads as well as was familiar with the JC Penny incident since it occurred and looked into why after it did. JC Penny was the ones who got themselves penalized in this case.

Since so far all that has been presented in this thread has not been supported with a case study I would be happy to hear from those who have tested including yourself. Would you mind sharing your personal tests or at least posts that directly speak of tests?

Edit: My experience with SEO has given me a current 3k+ visits a day in less than a year of learning. As well as a great deal of research into penalties and fixing penalties for clients. I am seeking facts not trying to suggest I know best if there is more evidence out there. Specific tests are appreciated. To me it seems insanely easy to create a penalty for any site if what you are suggesting is true and would be a major flaw exposed in google's ranking algorithms far worse than promoting oneself to game the results.

[AnthonyYoung]

HaHa, LOL

All the skeptics ask for proof... My interaction with this thread and elsewhere is not to encourage or divulge how to operate a malicious link campaign but to quash the myth that Google says it can't be done. More double-speak from Google from a prior post:

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team

I work in the lead generation business and have witnessed first hand publisher sites that have been burned by such attacks. I've witnessed publishers inadvertently burn their own sites b/c of the velocity and volume of link growth (usually with 100% identical anchor text).

No one is going to write that case study and nor should anyone publish it IMO.

[dittoeffect]

I wrote a reply then the page died and i lost it :(.

I hope no one does that case study to try and find out. Really no one should ever want to haha.

Ya I really do agree with what you have posted so far. All the skeptics do ask for proof. I was mostly asking because you stated: " You have to test. Then test again. This is only way to gain meaningful and actionable knowledge." So for you to believe what you are telling me I assumed you have proof besides possibly being misinformed(from experience and otherwise) as I may also be.

In your opinion do you think that such a malicuous attack could reduce rankings for an already established site (eg lose its long held first position for many keywords) or just that it would hurt future growth?

I am curious about what kind of penalty there would be to better understand this.

Good thread so far :).

[AnthonyYoung]

Malicious attacks can both reduce site rank and prevent it from achieving future rank... it really depends on the the severity of the offense in the eyes of google. Getting demoted in the rankings is definitely not as severe as being dropped from the index. Neither outcome is desirable.

BTW: Check out this article from Michael Gray directly responding to the article I mentioned previously by James Lancaster in SEJ: Understanding Your Backlink Profile.

[dittoeffect]

Ya dropping out of the index really sucks. I've had some a few sites drop out of index due to offending google and its lame to have to wait 10+ days to get them back. For some people it takes way longer or they don't ever get the penalty removed and give up.

Good post about understanding backlink profiles for anyone who doesn't know already. Really old info that has been around for a while though quite important to keep in mind. Haven't looked at the learn SEO section but that would be good to have floating around for people to see.

[irvingw]

Scan the URL with this link vetting tool

http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm

if it's got tons of bad associations (people they are linking to and people who are linking to them are linking with)I would suggest getting your link removed.

Use this tool before reaching out to a site you want to get linked on too, this way you know what you're dealing with